"Consider the direction in which we're moving. Britain has more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, by a huge margin. Nobody knows how many CCTV cameras there are in the country, but the most respectable estimate seems to be the one made by Cheshire police in 2011, which came up with a number of 1.85m. Add to this the capacity for facial recognition software, which already exists and is improving sharply.."

"...Charles Farr, the Home Office's head of the office of security and counter-terrorism ...also confirmed that among the 552,000 requests for communications data each year were requests from local authorities for personal data to use in investigations into benefit fraud, trading standards offences and antisocial behaviour."

"...a glimpse into the world of the 6,100 people crammed into the open-plan and underground offices at GCHQ....Put simply, HMG expects value from GCHQ which at least matches the £1bn a year that is being invested in us each year.
With so much resting on the agency, its influence has spread across Whitehall. GCHQ now has liaison officers working inside MI5, MI6 and Soca, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. It takes the lion's share of the £1.9bn budget for Britain's intelligence services, and has a staff that is more than twice the size of the combined workforces of MI5 and MI6."

"The youngsters are among more than 750 children of school age who have been reported to the authorities because of worrying behaviour.
It includes drawings of bombs and alarming messages as well as associating with suspected fanatics.
The children have all been referred to the Channel project, which is run by the Home Office and Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and designed to stop vulnerable people being drawn in to extremism.
A total of 2,653 referrals, of both adults and children, have been made since the scheme was launched in the wake of the July 7 suicide attacks in 2005.
Those reporting individuals include teachers, parents, youth workers, neighbours and even bin men.
The majority of referrals involved concerns over vulnerability to Islamist extremism but almost 400 cases involved far right radicalisation."

"A national police unit that uses undercover officers to spy on political groups is currently monitoring almost 9,000 people it has deemed "domestic extremists". The National Domestic Extremism Unit is using surveillance techniques to monitor campaigners who are listed on the secret database, details of which have been disclosed to the Guardian after a freedom of information request.

A total of 8,931 individuals "have their own record" on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants and intercepts, against political campaigners from across the spectrum...."

"...On Monday the Guardian carried a story that British intelligence had spied on delegates at two G20 summits, those chaired by Gordon Brown in 2009. Laptops and mobile phones had been hacked, and internet cafes installed and bugged. With many of the same heads of government gathering for the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, the story was, to put it mildly, sensational.
The source was the American whistleblower, Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the US National Security Agency had been running in the Guardian and Washington Post for a week. It was initially hinted at by other British media but was covered by a D-notice (warning against publishing anything that could damage national security) from the government."Report by Simon Jenkins

"...Officials said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (Tide) on the request of the CIA.

The database contains as many as 745,000 entries, and individuals on that list are not necessarily on the so-called terrorist watch list."

Source: The Times, ‘Champions’ to seek out university extremists', 25th May

"A network of civilian counter-terrorism officials who will gather information on the risk of extremism at each university has been installed for the first time.
The co-ordinators, all of whom will be in their posts by the end of the year, are officially described as best-practice “champions” who will concentrate on training higher-education staff. But a copy of the detailed job description for one of the posts suggests they will also be responsible for identifying the ideologies and drivers of extremism on each campus.
The introduction of the ten regional coordinators was met with criticism from civil liberties groups, who claimed that it would taint campuses with suspicion and stigmatise students.
They said that the network, part of the “Prevent” strand of the counter- terrorism strategy, would risk alienating Muslim students. “This is a dubious extension of a flawed policy,” said Emma Carr, deputy director of Big Brother Watch.

While universities have been reluctant to acknowledge publicly the extent of their counter-terrorism efforts, they have been quietly strengthening monitoring programmes. Privately, staff admit that they have been tracking extremists and working far more closely with security officials than students realise. “It’s not something you would want to broadcast, but universities are absolutely doing a lot more than they let on,” said a senior higher-education official..."

"...MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, is said to be fighting a fierce rearguard action against any move to reallocate its counter-terrorism resources. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is also said to be cautious about relaxing Britain’s defences against extremist attacks.
Senior sources have disclosed that Mr Osborne has asked agency chiefs if, following the London Olympics, Britain’s spending on intelligence should be shifted significantly away from counter-terrorism.

...His intervention, at a meeting of the National Security Council in the summer, is understood to have inflamed a row within Whitehall about the intelligence agencies’ future priorities. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are all under growing pressure to do more to defend British interests from internet-based attacks.

...One Whitehall source described the situation as 'a typical Whitehall turf-war', warning that the disputes could hamper the agencies’ bid for funding in the next spending round. The combined budget for the intelligence agencies will be £2.1 billion in 2014-15, a cut of 7 per cent over four years."

"...he UK is being watched by a network of 1.85m CCTV cameras, the vast majority of which are run by private companies, according to the only large-scale audit of surveillance cameras ever conducted.

The study, which involved police community support officers (PCSOs) physically counting virtually every camera in Cheshire, provides the first reliable estimate of how saturated with CCTV the UK has become....The data from Cheshire was then extrapolated to the UK, taking into account rural and urban differences. The addition of the number of publicly-owned CCTV, and cameras on transport networks, brought the total estimate to 1,853,681. This translates to one camera for every 32 UK citizens."

"...An Information Commissioner's Office report suggests that an estimated one million citizens are on the database known as Elmer - and many may be innocent. It criticises the system, introduced under terror laws 10 years ago, and questions if it is "justified, necessary and proportionate".

Tory peer Lord Marlesford said: 'This database sounds like something used by the Stasi in communist Germany. It is in effect a secret database of suspects - none of whom know they are on it nor can they respond to the allegations. It is most un-British and most undemocratic.'

Under the Terrorism Act 2000 every employee in the finance industry is required to send Soca the details of any customer they suspect of a financial crime, and are asked to include information such as their national insurance number, vehicle registration, account numbers and details of relevant transactions.."

"Last year it was reported that RAF spy planes in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, had detected strong Yorkshire and Birmingham accents from fighters using radios and telephones. The fighters apparently spoke the main Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu but lapsed into English when they were lost for the correct words.
The threat was thought sufficiently serious for spy planes to have been given the task of patrolling British skies in the hope of picking up the same voice signatures of the fighters once they had returned to the UK."

"Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.
The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists."

"...Mark Thomas [see next entry] talks about "three secret police units" (Doth I protest too much?, 26 October), but a quick search online shows that the National Public Order Intelligence Unit has its own Wikipedia entry and appears in Home Office documents, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu) has its own website and the National Domestic Extremist Team was mentioned in your pages as long ago as 2006."

"...Today's Guardian revelations of three secret police units goes some way to explain the targeting of protesters and raises worrying questions. The job of these units is to spy on protesters, and collate and circulate information about them. Protesters – or, as the police call them, 'domestic extremists' – are the new 'reds under the bed'.

Many of those targeted by the police have committed no crime and are guilty only of non-violent direct action. So it is worth reminding ourselves that protest is legal. Sorry if this sounds obvious, but you might have gained the impression that if three police units are spying on and targeting thousands, then those people must be up to something illegal.

The very phrase 'domestic extremist' defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy. Spying on entire groups and organisations, and targeting the innocent, undermines not only our rights but the law – frightfully silly of me to drag this into an argument about policing, I know....
A police spokesman has said that anyone who finds themselves on a database 'should not worry at all'. When a spokesman for the three secret units will not disclose a breakdown of their budgets, and two of the three will not even name who heads their operations (even MI6 gave us an initial, for God's sake), then the words 'should not worry at all' are meaningless. Indeed, when the police admit that someone could end up on a secret police database merely for attending a demonstration, it is exactly the time to worry.
...."

"...Netcu, the National Domestic Extremism Team and National Public Order Intelligence Unit are staffed with serving police officers. Despite repeated claims, Netcu is not an operational unit and is not responsible for 'deploying officers from regional forces'; it does not carry out any investigations; it does not collect nor hold intelligence on a database; it does not provide intelligence to industry or receive money from it. The role of Netcu is to tackle domestic extremism by providing preventive security guidance and support to police forces, and working proactively with businesses, academic institutions and other organisations...."

"The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) now runs three units whose purpose is to tackle another phenomenon it has never defined: domestic extremism. These are the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu), the Welsh Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Because Acpo is not a public body but a private limited company, the three bodies are exempt from freedom of information laws and other kinds of public accountability, even though they are funded by the Home Office and deploy police officers from regional forces."

"GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, is developing classified technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to land lines and mobiles.
The £1 billion snooping project — called Mastering the Internet (MTI) — will rely on thousands of 'black box' probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure.
The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year...

Last week, in what appeared to be a concession to privacy campaigners, [Home Secretary Jacqui] Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single 'big brother' database to store centrally all communications data in Britain.
'The government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and] therefore does not propose to pursue this move,' she said.
Grabbing favourable headlines, Smith announced that up to £2 billion of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and telephone companies to retain information for up to 12 months in separate databases.
However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums — amounting to more than £1 billion over three years — had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Smith’s announcement appeared to be a 'smokescreen'.
'We opposed the big brother database because it gave the state direct access to everybody’s communications. But this network of black boxes achieves the same thing via the back door,' Chakrabarti said.
Informed sources have revealed that a £200m contract has been awarded to Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant.
A second contract has been given to Detica, the British IT firm which has close ties to the intelligence agencies. "

"MI5 used some astonishing new weapons in its action against suspected terrorists in the north of England last week.
Playing a leading role were teams of women who kept an eye on the suspects during the long investigation into what is believed to be the biggest campaign plotted by Al Qaeda since the London bombings.
Created by the Security Service’s A4 surveillance division, the teams were tested for the first time in the operation, code-named Pathway
....They worked in two groups: one, made up of 72 elderly women, the other, young mothers with babies in prams.
Both had undergone a crash course in surveillance techniques...."

"The Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a 200-strong Home Office unit created 18 months ago, has said in meetings it wants to 'flood the internet' with 'positive' interpretations of Islam. It plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimisation techniques, which it's hoped will boost their profile online and battle radicalisation....The Home and Foreign Offices also set up the secretive Research, Information and Communications Unit, which actively produces and distributes propaganda against extremist groups."

"Every call made, email sent and website visited is now being logged under new regulations. What does that mean for investigative journalists - and their need to protect sources? ...New regulations that came into force last week - requiring telephone and internet companies to keep logs of what numbers are called, and which websites and email services and internet telephony contacts are made - have left some wondering if investigative journalism, with its need to protect sources (and its sources' need, often, for protection), has been dealt a killer blow.

Worries focus on the fact that every government department, local council and even quango can access this telephone and internet data, given a judge's clearance. What will they use it for? To investigate everything from treason to flytipping. Might it also be used to find out who has been tipping off a journalist on a local paper about the misdeeds of local councillors? That's the concern.

Intelligence & Security Committee Annual report 2007-2008, March 2009"In July 2007....the Prime Minister outlined plans for a National Security Forum, consisting of businesses, academics, community groups, and military and security experts. The aim of the new forum is to:...harness a much wider range of expertise and experience from outside government, and to help us plan for the furure....[The forum will] advise... the National Security Committee
In July 2008, the Prime Miniser announced that the National Security Forum would comprise a core group of 12 members with expertise covering the range of threats and risks outlined in the National Security Strategy. Its role will be to provide advice to NSID [ministerial committee on national security, international relations and development] and it will also be able to commission research on national security-related matters. The forum will be supplemented by a register of experts who could be called upon to provide specific advice and expertise as required. There will be a dedicated Cabinet Office Secretariat to support the work of the National Security Foru. How the role of the National Security Forum will develop, and what value it will add, remain to be seen".

Elsewhere in this much redacted report, the parliamentary committee chaired by Kim Howells MP notes, "In October 2007, the Government published the outcome of its Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 CSR07). As we noted in our 2006-2007 report, this included a settlement for the Single Intelligence Account (SIA) which increased the funding available for the intelligence and security Agenices to just over £2 billion by 2010/11...In this Report, we outline the allocation of additional funding between the Agencies, their spending priorities, and their expenditure plans for this additional money...for GCHQ, 78% of the additional £*** million it received will be used to consolidate its current position, with 22% available for further expansion and additional investments in new capabilities; for the Security Service [MI5], 20% of the additional £*** million it received will be used to consolidate its current position with 80% available for expansion and investment in new capabilities; for SIS [MI6], 31% of the additional £*** million it received will be used to consolidate its current position with 69% available for expansion and investment in new capabilities..

A further ***% pf GCHQ's ICT effort is on what it calls 'strategic reporting' - long-term assessments of the way terrorists operate. The Director of GCHQ used *** as an example of this work: We look at the *** for example, so we can identify some of the *** ...we are looking to see what these ***"...

The [Security] Service complted the first phase of its 'Information Exploitation (IE) Programme' in june 2007 at the qcost of £*** million. The programme provides tools to enable investigators to search across systems, map networks and analyse events based on time and geography. It therefore allows specialist analysts to focus on more complex in-depth analysis. The second phase, when completed, will double investigative capability by the transforming the Service's ability to process and exploit intelligence. It will improve the way investigators are able to use information from a variety of sources and provide with what the Director General has described as 'trip-wire' coverage of significant patterns of activity..."[Editor's note - related link 'Data mining dossier']

"£16 million will be spent this year creating new posts across 24 priority forces, as well as funding several other initiatives such as the Channel programme, which is currently up and running in 6 forces.
I’ll just say a little bit about Channel since it is an excellent example of partnership in practice.
This scheme identifies individuals that may be vulnerable to getting swept up in violent extremism and refers them toward multi-agency support.
Since it started in April 2007, the two pilot sites in London and the North West have received over 100 referrals. We are going to expand this further and the aim is that by the end of the financial year, we will bring the total number of sites up to approximately 25 operating across 12 police forces"..

"£16 million will be spent this year creating new posts across 24 priority forces, as well as funding several other initiatives such as the Channel programme, which is currently up and running in 6 forces.
I’ll just say a little bit about Channel since it is an excellent example of partnership in practice.
This scheme identifies individuals that may be vulnerable to getting swept up in violent extremism and refers them toward multi-agency support.
Since it started in April 2007, the two pilot sites in London and the North West have received over 100 referrals. We are going to expand this further and the aim is that by the end of the financial year, we will bring the total number of sites up to approximately 25 operating across 12 police forces"..

"A database to track and store the international travel records of millions of people is being compiled by the Government.

The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details for all 250 million journeys made in and out of the UK each year.
The computerised pattern of every individual's travel history will be kept for up to 10 years.
The government says the database is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism.".

"Sweeping new powers allowing personal information about every citizen to be handed over to government agencies faced condemnation yesterday amid warnings that Britain is experiencing the greatest threats to civil rights for decades....
Proposals in the Coroners and Justice Bill include measures to authorise ministers to move huge amounts of data between government departments and other agencies and public bodies. Bodies that hold personal information include local councils, the DVLA, benefits offices and HM Revenue and Customs...Senior figures in British public life are launching a 'call to arms' to highlight the erosion of historic civil liberties... Britain could become 'a new kind of police state'. "

"...On December 14, the British PM flew to Islamabad to announce a £6m 'pact against terror', saying he wanted to 'remove the chain' that led from the mountains of Pakistan to the streets of Britain. A significant part of the funding was intended for the Sig [Special Investigation Group] currently a tight-knit cell of 37 full-time specialists that was to be expanded into a 300-strong force with an investigation division, an armed wing, an intelligence department and a research section. In return, Britain asked for access to the Sig's raw data and captured extremists who might illuminate British plots".

"...The wholesale collection and storage of all our email, internet and mobile phone records would allow the Government to know more than it has ever known about how we live our daily lives.

By accessing mobile phone records and using GPS tracker technology it would be possible to discover where a phone-user is on any given day. Police or the security services would also be able to establish the length of each call as well as the number that was dialled. Messages to and from social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace could also be subject to covert surveillance, meaning the Government would know both where we are and who our friends or associates might be".
....

"...Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.

The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the 'surveillance society' threatening personal privacy.

Hacking – known as 'remote searching' – has been quietly adopted by police across Britain following the development of technology to access computers' contents at a distance. Police say it is vital for tracking cyber-criminals and paedophiles and is used sparingly but civil liberties groups fear it is about to be vastly expanded...."

Computer hacking has to be approved by a chief constable, who must be satisfied the action is proportionate to the crime being investigated.

Last month European ministers agreed in principle to allow police to carry out remote searches of suspects' computers across the EU."

"..Until now most communications traffic data has been held by phone companies and internet service providers for billing purposes but the growth of broadband phone services, chatrooms and anonymous online identities mean that is no longer the case.
The Home Office's interception modernisation programme, which is working on the superdatabase proposal, argues that it is no longer good enough for communications companies to be left to retrieve such data when requested by the police and intelligence services. A Home Office spokeswoman said last night the changes were needed so law enforcement agencies could maintain their ability to tackle serious crime and terrorism.

...
External estimates of the cost of the superdatabase have been put as high as £12bn..."

"The government is drawing up plans to give sweeping new powers to the security and intelligence agencies, and other public bodies, allowing them to access personal data using a wide range of internet sites, including social and gaming networks, Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, signalled".

"The security services are picking up more suspicious activity from Northern Ireland's dissident republicans than from any other radical group in the UK, the Guardian has learned.

Up to 60% of all the security services' electronic intercepts - phonetaps and other covert technical operations - have come from dissidents, despite the threat posed by hundreds of suspected Islamist extremists on the mainland....

Although officially police have the lead in security policy in the province, MI5 has taken over surveillance operations against dissident republicans. Due to policing reforms the number of special branch anti-terrorist officers has dropped over the last five years. In some areas, such as West Belfast, the number of experienced special branch officers has halved".

"Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to announce an extra 300 police will be moved into fighting terrorism and radicalisation within communities...In a speech, Ms Smith is expected to say new jobs will include working with communities and existing police, complementing the work of neighbourhood teams...She said the 300 jobs would include 'new roles' - such as training others, briefing on where radicalism might be happening, identifying people at risk of radicalisation, working with colleges, prisons and schools and make links to mosques". In other media coverage of the speech, The Guardian (17th April 2008) noted that the Home Secretary "also disclosed that the joint terrorism analysis centre, which monitors the terrorist threat, is setting up a prevent unit to improve the understanding of what and who drives violent extremism. The information will be passed to the new four regional hubs of special branch counter-terrorist officers...deciding where the extra police counter-terrorist staff will be based will help the process of mapping the political geography of violent extremism".
News of the World's interview with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, April 2008

"...greater integration to our approach, through the establishment of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the multi-department Research,Information and Communications Unit, and the cross-government Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, which has responsibility for implementing our cross-government counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST...the resources dedicated to counter-terrorism and intelligence have more than doubled, from £1 billion in 2001 to £2.5 billion today....resources will continue to grow, with planned increases up to £3.5 billion by 2011, including a further £240 million for counter-terrorist policing, and additional growth in the Security Service taking its strength to double 2001 levels; improvements to our ability to monitor and analyse violent extremism; and additional investment in the long-term challenge of tackling violent extremism and promoting greater understanding -with £70 million at home and £400 million overseas in the next three years".
'Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern BritainReport - Liberty & the Nuffield Foundation, March 2008

"At the less intrusive end is "directed surveillance", where a person who is suspected of criminal activity is placed under covert surveillance in a public space as opposed to private property. In this case the warrant for surveillance is self-authorised by a law-enforcement agency, only requiring permission of a senior officer. Law enforcement agencies issued some 23,628 directed surveillance authorisations and other public authorities some 6,024 during 2005/06...

Further up the scale is "intrusive surveillance", when a person is placed under covert surveillance on residential premises or in a private vehicle including situations in which a bugging device is used...like directed surveillance, it initially requires agency self-authorisation at a senior level but then has to be approved by the Surveillance Commissioner before it takes effect. There were 435 intrusive surveillance authorisations during 2005/06 with no mention of any having been rejected.

"Covert human intelligence sources", or CHISs, are informants or police officers used as undercover agents, usually to establish or maintain a personal relationship with a suspected criminal. There were 4,559 CHISs recruited by law enforcement agencies during 2005/06 and 437 by local authorities for the same period. The authorisation is by the Chief Constable or a person of equivalent standing in other agencies.

In addition to these forms of surveillance, there is "property interference"..this again only requires self-authorisation, other than in sensitive cases involving a home or hotel room, or where privileged material may be obtained; in these circumstances, the approval of the Surveillance Commissioner is also required. There were 2,310 such authorisations during 2005/06, with four being quashed by the Commissioner for failing to meet the test of 'necessity'.

The Service [MI5] increased its spend during 2005/06 by nearly 29% against 2004/05...at the time of publication, the total number of staff in the service is around 3,200, with a further 690 individuals (including Northern Ireland) due to be recruited over 2007/2008.

GCHQ's net operating costs rose to £***...recognising a need to strengthen its counter-terrrorism capabilities, GCHQ reallocated resources througout 2005/06 to cover terrorist targets. The work was often manifested through direct support to key Security Service investigations - notably OVERT, for which GCHQ temporarily diverted significant resources to support the operation...in our 2005-2006 Annual Report, we commented on GCHQ's SIGINT Modernisation (SIGMOD) programme - the collective name for projects that represent the work needed to keep GCHQ ahead in the SIGINT business...the complex challenges of SIGMOD and the vast sums of money involved illustrate the importance of procurment....in previous years, the NAO has expressed concern that GCHQ had struggled to meet standards in best practice and achieve value for money...

Public expenditure on counter-terrorism and intelligence has risen significantly in recent years. by 2007/08, annual spending on these areas will be £2.5 billion - more than double the expenditure before 9/11."

This has got to stop. Britain's snooper state is getting completely out of hand...An official report by Britain's interception of communications commissioner has just revealed that nearly 800 public bodies are between them making an average of nearly 1,000 requests a day for "communications data", including actual phone taps, mobile phone records, email or web search histories, not to mention old-fashioned snail mail.

Kennedy's report [Sir Paul Kennedy, appeal court judge who monitors communications intercepts] revealed that more than 250,000 requests were made over a nine-month period to monitor individuals' phone calls, emails and post.

Nearly 800 public bodies can lawfully request personal communications data. They include every police force and prison and 474 local authorities as well as the security and intelligence agencies. A total of 253,557 requests for such information were made in the last nine months of 2006, the latest figures available reveal.

The figure compares with almost 450,000 such requests made over the previous 15-month period.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said last night: "It beggars belief that in a nine-month period, based on these figures, the entire City of Westminster could have had their phones tapped ..."

"The essence of a secret service used to be secrecy, including of its methods and achievements. Otherwise it is just a branch of the police. In the early days of "avowal" in the 1980s, the heads of MI5 and MI6 would invite journalists to tell them how to go about handling publicity. One, Stella Rimington, was obsessed with how she might do on Any Questions? Others fancied themselves as M lookalikes. The only advice that made them miserable was that they should stay secret. 'How,' one retorted, 'are we ever to lobby for our budgets when the cold war is over?' The answer of both MI5's Evans and MI6's John Scarlett is to join the fear factory.

In 2002-03, before the Iraq war, the security service supplied the Cabinet Office with a weekly catalogue of 'terror fears' - anthrax, smallpox, sarin, dirty nuclear devices and a Christmas bombing campaign - to soften public opinion for the war. It was MI5's answer to MI6's 'weapons of mass destruction', and was the same drivel.

There can be only two results from this abuse of publicity. One is that the public demotes such scares to wolf-crying and treats them as background noise. The other is that, as all scare stories stereotype communities, the host nation distances itself from whatever group allegedly harbours the threat. The latter in turn retreats and denies the police the intelligence required for public safety. In other words, speeches such as those from the head of MI5 are wholly self-defeating.

Stupefying sums of money are being devoted to warding off a threat to life and limb which, I suspect, is far less than was posed by the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s...Scaring the public as an act of policy may win a few headlines but it is stupid.''

The Blair government ruined Britain's reputation for fair treatment among the moderate Muslims on whom stopping a tiny number of fanatics now depends. Abroad it declared wars, bombed Muslim capitals, killed civilians, and initiated a crusade for 'western values' among people sceptical of their virtues. At home it extended terrorism laws to make every dark-skinned Briton feel he or she is being made a scapegoat. While Britain remains adequately safe from attack, it has been at a wretched cost.

...One question remains. No sensible person has a problem with rounding up suspects for questioning for a limited period. But if Evans and his like claim to 'know' 2,000 Britons who are 'actively engaged in terrorist-related activities' and pose a 'direct threat to national security and public safety', why are these 2,000 still at large? It cannot be for lack of powers, after half a dozen laws enacted to this specific end.

Could it be that headlines about 2,000 terrorists 'on the loose as we speak' are more helpful to the government and its agencies than if they were under lock and key in Belmarsh? We should regret the day the secret service stopped being secret and became just another government front organisation.

"The MI5 director general [Jonathan Evans] said the country's rightful concern to protect children from exploitation needed to be extended to cover violent extremism....Mr Evans said that when his predecessor, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, made a similar speech this time last year she said MI5 had identified 1,600 supporters of terrorism who were a 'direct threat to national security and public safety'.
'That figure today would be at least 2,000,'Mr Evans said...due to a flow of new extremist recruits and 'improved coverage of extremist communities' by MI5.

Speaking more generally, he said the UK's greatest security threat continued to be al-Qaida, which was conducting a 'deliberate campaign against the United Kingdom' and there was 'no sign of it reducing...there is no doubt now that al-Qaida in Iraq aspires to promote terrorist attacks outside Iraq...Mr Evans also confirmed that MI5's new Northern Ireland headquarters would open soon. He described it as part of the service's 'UK-wide counter terrorism network'. By 2011, MI5 expects to have 4,000 staff, and 25% of them will work outside MI5's London headquarters".

"Thousands of police officers on the beat in areas with large Pakistani communities — such as Birmingham, Leeds and London — will be expected to keep a lookout for young Muslims known to have become radicals. The information gathered from day-to-day observations will be used to compile a comprehensive database of lower-level extremism. This register will help both MI5 and the police.
However, there are thousands of other radicalised young Muslims from countries such as Pakistan, North Africa and Somalia about whom there is no intelligence linking them to terrorist groups.
Because of limited resources, they are not regarded as a priority for MI5 when there are so many others who are known to be affiliated to terrorist networks in Britain and, in many cases, actually to be plotting attacks. The fear is that young Muslims who are being radicalised may be persuaded to support the cause of the terrorists.
MI5 has built up an extensive archive of extremist activities, according to security sources. But its surveillance officers have time to focus only on those posing a terrorist threat.
Security sources say that monitoring extremists is only part of the drive to deal with the growing challenge of a younger generation of Muslims, most of them of Pakistani origin, being suborned into supporting terrorism".

"What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don't know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas....My Service is growing very rapidly. By 2008 it will be twice the size it was at 9/11. We know much more than we did then. We have developed new techniques, new sources, new relationships".

At the Labour conference in Manchester in September, Mr Reid announced a fundamental review of the counter-terrorist police and security services' ability to tackle the new security threat. He said he wanted a seamless approach to what had become a seamless threat. He is not thinking of merging MI5 and MI6.

The chancellor is clearly thinking of bringing together budgets from the Home Office, the intelligence services and the Ministry of Defence. He has pointed out that the security budget has been nearly doubled in the past few years to £2bn. Others put the budget closer to £1.4bn.

"Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist unit and special branch have merged into a 1,500-strong counter-terrorism command, known as SO15, headed by the current anti-terrorist chief, Peter Clarke.
The new department, which takes over 70 ongoing investigations, unites the Metropolitan police's intelligence and evidence-gathering operations. The unit represents a doubling of the Met's counter-terrorism capability since 9/11.
Mr Clarke said two police counter-terrorism units had been set up, in Greater Manchester and the Midlands, with one planned for the north-east
".

"Most surveillance teams consist of 16 people, but it can take up to twice as many to trail someone who is very active and does not follow routines. It is believed that about 80 suspects are under intense surveillance, requiring hundreds of officers working full time. Others are monitored more lightly, but still absorb considerable manpower".

"Throughout Britain over 4 million surveillance cameras (that's one for every 15 people in the country) record a staggering 600,000 images an hour. MI5 reports that it is actively monitoring some 1,200 at the moment - three times as many as in 2004 - and each case can require a team of 30 or more people to maintain a full surveillance operation. The budget for intelligence operations has increased by about 35% since 2001, and over 70% of all MI5 resources are now directed at counter-terrorism operations..."Information" is not "intelligence". And the police and security services have an overload of one and not nearly enough of the other
".
MI5 conducts secret inquiry into 8,000 al-Qa'ida 'sympathisers'by Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent, The Independent, 3rd July 2006

"MI5 has grown from just under 2,000 staff in 2001 to about 2,500 today, rising to 3,500 in 2008...Much of the work of Project Rich Picture is being done by MI5 officers based at new regional stations with the help of GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham. Four centres: Scotland, the north-west, north-east and midlands are up and running. A further four, in the south-west, Wales, the east and the south-east will be operational by year's end".

First posted on Salaam in June 2006

The main players in the domestic security regime are MI5, GCHQ and two specialist units within the police, Special Branch (SB) and the Met's Anti-Terrorism unit, SO13. MI5 and GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters) report to the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary respectively, while SBs form part of the structure of the police constabularies and report to a chief constable. There are currently a total of 53 SBs across the country. MI5's brief is to only investigate individuals and organizations that pose 'a threat to national security', while Special Branch's remit are 'threats to public order'. There were turf wars with the police in the late 1990s when MI5 argued that its expertise in surveillance, covert searches and agent-handling was well-suited for tackling organised crime. This has been settled with the Special Branch now regarded as the 'executive partner' of MI5.
The budget of MI5 is an official secret and information is only published for the combined agencies - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. However the Chancellor of the Exchequer's annual budget speeches offer clues. In April 2002 he stated that "since September 11th we have made provision of 50 million pounds for our domestic security responsibilities". A year later he noted, "at home our responsibility is to safeguard our communities from terrorist threats and our resolve is absolute. It is therefore right also to set aside an extra £330 million for additional domestic counter-terrorism measures". Thus around £380 million extra funding has been made available to the MI5 and its supporting bodies.

It is estimated that during the late 1990s, around 25% of the total MI5 budget was on "terrorism related to Northern Ireland" (1) . By 2001 this had increased to 33% (2). Assuming the extra £380 million represents a doubling of the MI5 budget this would result in a total budget of £760 million. Of this, possibly the full amount previously deployed on the Irish is now directed towards the Muslim communities - around £250 million.

In 1998 the number of personnel in MI5 was believed to be around 2000 and the annual budget in the region of £140 million. This would suggest that the new monies of £250 million have allowed a head-count increase of about 3500 for the domestic security regime.
The headcount increase has been gradual since 9/11. The Intelligence & Security Committee report for 2001-2002 noted: "the Director General [of MI5] said that plans were ambitious but he believed that the Service was taking action, such as the use of recruitment agencies and *** ***". The report also noted that "GCHQ had already acknowledged a need to acquire extra linguists and analysts to carry out processing and reporting ***" (3) .

Both MI5 and Special Branch are elite bodies with an ingrained culture and thus a limited capacity to absorb new staff. The former in particular has a tradition of drawing from certain public schools and Oxbridge colleges, relying on the tutor network. It is likely that many of the criticisms on management style raised by David Shaylor, the MI5 whistle-blower, have by now been quietly implemented. He has described the climate in the 1990s, "for reasons that appear to be outdated, MI5 models itself on the culture of the home Civil Service, except that it is the culture of the Civil Service before the reforms which began in the late 1980s. MI5 does not explain this to its new recruits during the recruitment process. If I had known this, I probably would not have joined the Service as I had never had any inclination to work in this kind of repressive, conformist culture" (4). Given a total headcount of around 2000 a few years ago It is unlikely that M5 could have absorbed more than 250 new staff per year in recent years, though the possibility of 'out-sourcing' can also not be discounted. Similarly the total headcount of Special Branch in 2002 was around 4000 (5) - again placing a limit on induction.

Some ideas on where the money is going can be extrapolated from reports of organizational changes and the occasional operational details that filter into the public domain. For example in July 2004, Richard Norton-Taylor reported that MI5 was setting up regional "intelligence cells to counter the threat from Islamists…the first cells will be set up in the West Midlands and north-west England "(6) . The same reporter a year later wrote that "MI5's resources are to be beefed up with a new Special Reconnaissance Regiment which women are being encouraged to join. Its role may reflect the army's 14th Intelligence Company, which operated in Northern Ireland" (7).

In July 2005, Vikram Dodd in The Guardian reported a similar mirror development in the Special Branch: "special intelligence units are being planned across Britain to monitor Muslims so the authorities can collect 'community by community' knowledge…to be known as Muslim Contact Units and staffed by Special Branch Officers….will have language skills and seek detailed knowledge of the dynamic of Islamic communities in their areas" (8).

Details of a Contact Unit have been provided by Tayside Police in Scotland: "The force's Special Branch Community Contact Unit (SBCCU) was set up last October [2005] on a trial basis as a new way of combating the terror menace. Now, having received glowing praise for the unit's first six months of operation, Tayside Police have been convinced of the benefits of maintaining it permanently. The project, which is unique in Scotland, aims to gather intelligence from community sources, including education chiefs and community leaders, on any potential troublemakers….Tayside Police prepared a report on the results of the pilot scheme, which it shared with forces in Scotland and England. DCS McCashey said that despite projects of this nature already existing in England, Tayside's success has attracted officers from south of the border wishing to witness the project's work first-hand" (9). Assuming a support team of 4 per SBCCU and about 25 established across the UK, this would require about 100 personnel, with a total cost of say £7 million per annum.

Other funds would have been allocated to intense surveillance activities. The Intelligence and Security Committee's 'Report into the London Terrorist Attacks on July 7 2005' notes, "intensive 'round the clock' coverage of a single target can require up to *** Security Service surveillance staff out of a total of around *** surveillance staff, and around *** organisation staff….in 2001, at around the time of 9/11, the Securty Service knew of approximately 250 primary investigative targets in the UK. By July 2004 this had risen to over 500, of which only about *** could be investigated, and only *** intensively. By July 2005 the number of primary investigative targets in the UK has risen to around 800, only about ***% of which the Service was able to cover"(10). Writing in the Daily Telegraph (14th September 2005), Philip Johnston's view was that "hundreds of terror suspects are under surveillance". Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent at the Sunday Telegraph has suggested that the figure has now risen from 800: he writes, that the MI5 "fears silent army of 1,200 biding its time in the suburbs" (11).

Perhaps of a total of 1200, about 20 are under intense surveillance, 100 under fairly tight observation while the rest - and buildings such as mosques and bookshops - subject to a tier 3 type of observation. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of 'experts' wishing to egg on the security agencies. For example Professor Anthony Glees of Brunel University has named 24 UK universities where "extremist or terrorist groups had been detected" (12). He adds , ""our security agencies - Special Branch and MI5 - need to develop new strategies for monitoring campus extremism. They need to work not simply against 'terrorism' but also against 'subversion' (13). "

Some indication of the resources allocated in an intensive coverage can be obtained from what is known about the tragic Charles de Menezes shooting. Investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) are believed to have examined the roles of at least 26 undercover officers, marksmen and senior managers involved in the operation (14). A rule of thumb may be that 'fairly tight' observation would require a dozen, while the lower level observation a couple. This might require about 5000 staff, sourced from recruitment, long-term secondment and short-term redeployment within the police forces. With a cost of £40,000 per head, this suggests a total ball-park cost of around £200 million, a fair chuck of the new monies allocated.

Assuming a total allocation of £250 million, after the SBCU and surveillance allocations, the balance left over is about £40 million. However funding is also needed for informers, sting operations and IT projects.

Writing in the Guardian in February 2004, Alan Travis and Richard Norton-Taylor noted, "MI5 has been seeking informants in the Muslim community through messages on the internet in Arabic" (15) . The Forest Gate shooting and raid on the home of an Islamic scholar in Dewsbury in June 2006 have also highlighted their role.

The Northern Ireland experience is that key informants can command incredible rates - the trial of David Rupert in June 2003 revealed that he had been paid £700,000 to infiltrate dissident Republican groups (Financial Times, 19 June 2003). Torrens Knight, according to Rosie Boycott and Owen Bowcott, "allegedly received a £50,000 'salary'; he was an Ulster police informant. The work of the agent Stakeknife is also well-documented - the informant who rose to become second-in-command of the IRA's internal security unit(16) . More recently, Denis Donaldson was in the headlines: he led a double life as an IRA hero while also serving British intelligence for 20 years. Some Irish nationalists now remember their surprise at the ease with which Donaldson would pass through security checks, indicating his journeys to Lebanon and other places may have been facilitated(17) . Donaldson himself confessed, "I was recruited in the 1980s after compromising myself during a vulnerable time I my life…over that period I was paid money" (18).

In the 1990s informants were paid around £10,000 for infiltrating extreme animal rights groups (19). Today's rates may perhaps be around double that for a middle-ranking informer. Also well-veiled from the public eye are details of any sting operations - it is sub-judice at present to venture into this area because of current trials.

Any left over monies are easily absorbed by IT projects! Funding has gone into a system to allow MI5's regional bases to pass intelligence to headquarters (20). There is the 'Scope' project - "a complex programme aimed at fundamentally changing the way the intelligence community interacts. It will be underpinned by a secure web-enabled information system…." (21). By 2005, the project had exceeded its budget by 50%(22) .

There are other indications that the domestic security bodies have been over-indulged. For example at a time when so much fuss is made on lack of resources, the anti-terrorism branch was able to establish an eight-strong team "for examining the backgrounds of British residents suspected of committing atrocities during the second world war" (23). The mind boggles!

The consequences on the Muslim community are manifold. It is making them feel unfairly besieged, with the burden of guilt on their shoulders. They are naturally start looking over the shoulder and begin fearing shadows, mirroring the attitude of the security services. Who is to stop the odd informant from settling old scores or creating other mischief? The pre-dawn raid on the family home of Abdul Kahar in Forest Gate took place after an informant told MI5 that he had seen a home-made chemical device there. Ben Leapman and Adam Lusher, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, reveal that "there were claims that the informant had a grudge against the brothers"(24) . In the mind of Iain Duncan Smith MP, the raid on Maulana Yaqub Qasimi's home in Dewsbury "raised the concern among some in the intelligence community that Islamic extremists were using disinformation to sow discord and to bring the police into disrepute"(25) . Mr Duncan Smith's real message is 'beware double-agents' - the flow of information and misinformation is now a two-way street!
The Northern Ireland experience was that the approach to an informant was often made while a person was reaching the end of a prison sentence. Other vulnerable individuals may be those held because of deportation orders or visa irregularities.

An example is the case of Imam Shafiqur Rehman from Oldham, Lancashire. He was brought before a special immigration tribunal - the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) - in August 1999 to consider a demand for his deportation by the Home Secretary on national security grounds. The hearing was attended by two MI5 officers. The Times (17 August 1999) reported: "Witness J was head of the MI5 group that monitored terrorism on the Indian subcontinent. Witness A was in charge of investigations into Islamic extremists from the area operating in the United Kingdom". The charge against the imam was that he had raised cash and organised young British Muslim recruits for the Markaz Dawa al-Irshad (MDI). Witness A stated that a substantial percentage of cash raised by Mr Rehman's group went to fund a jihad in Kashmir. Mr Rehman and his supporters had done nothing in this case but he was "regularly involved in jihad training. We are concerned at the potential threat to national security". However an underlying concern during Imam Shafiq's hearing was his allegation that he had been approached to serve as an informer by the MI5 in 1997 and had refused. A third MI5 officer at the hearing, Witness I according to The Times report, admitted that in 1997 the Security Service had thought of recruiting him. Imam Shafiq said that the deportation order was to punish him for his refusal.

There are however signs that the community is responding to the challenge with a positive attitude rather than despondency. For example there are now an increasing number of initiatives by mosques to open their doors and reach out into their neighborhoods. At the end of the day, it will be these neighbours who will stand up to be counted if injustices happen. Younger Muslims are also entering law courses in greater numbers and showing interest in modules on human rights law. This will lead to participation in mainstream civil and human rights bodies and the establishment of alliances that can only help society as a whole.